De Beauvoir, Simone (editor)

New York. 1993. Scribner. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0684195666. Translated from the French by Lee Fahnestock & Norman MacAfee. 320 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Letters France Translated. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Quiet Moments in a War, the companion volume to the acclaimed Witness to My Life, reveals Jean-Paul Sartre at the peak of his powers and renown, engaged in an exchange of ideas and intimacies with his 'beloved Beaver,' Simone de Beauvoir. Spanning the years 1940-1963, these letters describe Sartre's war - as a soldier, a prisoner of the Germans, and a man of the Resistance - and chart his path to fame with the publication of his major works. From September 1939 to June 1940, Sartre wrote Beauvoir almost daily from the front as he waited for the Germans to attack. It was a time of great productivity for Sartre, as he wrote the novel The Age of Reason and sketched out Being and Nothingness. In late 1940, he wrote his first play while interned in a German prison camp. The letters after his release reveal the wartime uncertainties and delays in securing a production of The Flies, an existential retelling of the Oresteia with a thinly veiled protest against acquiescence toward the German occupation. After 1942 there are fewer letters, as the couple was less often apart, but extraordinary ones. In almost every one, there is mention of a new play, novel, or essay underway. Quiet Moments in a War completes the extraordinary correspondence of one of modern history's most celebrated couples, and documents the emergence of a great intellectual figure. inventory #21176 ISBN: 0684195666.